Steirereck

Vienna, Austria

No.14

Ultra-modern setting for cutting edge Austrian cooking

What’s it all about: It may, on paper, sound fairly traditional – family owned for generations, with a bias towards Austria’s rural Styrian region – but under the guidance of chef Heinz Reitbauer, Steirereck has become a byword for cutting-edge cooking rooted in the Austrian landscape.

What’s the vibe? Housed in a monolithic glass cube in Vienna’s Stadtpark, Steirereck’s design may be super-modern but the interior speaks a recognisable language of international fine dining. It’s a bright, tranquil vision of wood, concrete and starched white table linen.

Typical dishes: Reitbauer’s signature says everything you need to know about his outlook, being equal parts culinary theatre, precise technique and obvious reverence of local ingredients. The freshwater mountain fish, char, is cooked at the table in hot beeswax before being returned on a plate with yellow carrot, pollen and sour cream.

What else? While the tasting menu is, undoubtedly, the best way to engage with Reitbauer’s vision, the à la carte menu also includes plenty of gems – from a wild boar’s head with carrots, pineapple, radicchio and buckwheat to Forono beets with hempseed, new potatoes and woodruff.